The catalyst for this SE Turkey driving tour was that my parents were coming to Turkey to join an Iran tour in Istanbul. So after three days in Şanlıurfa, we were off for a few days in Istanbul. My Dad also invited Megan and me on the Iran tour, something the three of us had been looking forward to for over a year. My Mom, however, viewed Iran with a little more trepidation than we did, probably thinking something like, “why does Dennis take me to Pakistan and Jordan when other people go to Grand Cayman or Paris?” But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. I am anxious to write about our incredible experiences in Iran, but first Şanlıurfa (aka Urfa) and İstanbul.
In Urfa a not very old Syriac Church (constructed in 1861) was turned into a cultural center (Vali Kemalettin Gazezoğlu Kültür Merkezi). The Grand Mosque of Urfa (Ulu Camii) uses a Christian church’s bell tower as its minaret. Urfa’s Armenian Church of the 12 Apostles was turned into Fırfırlı Mosque in 1956, and the nearby Saint John Armenian Cathedral is now the Selahaddin Eyyubi Mosque. In Istanbul the Fethiye Müzesi preserves the mosaics of an old church, later used as a mosque, and of course the story is the same for the more famous Aya Soyfa. Now, of course, everything is Turkish, and it’s strange to think that both these cities — Şanlıurfa and İstanbul — were more cosmopolitan 150 years ago than they are now. Globalization and relatively cheap travel made many of the world’s large cities more cosmopolitan during the 20th century, but in Turkey, historically a major crossroads, the opposite happened in the last century.
